Warndarang is characterized by an unusually simplified nominal case system but highly intricate pronominal and demonstrative systems. It is a primarily prefixing language with agglutinating verbal complexes and relatively straightforward syntax.

Warndarang is closely related to Mara, which was traditionally spoken to the south of Warndarang and today has a handful of speakers. The languages Alawa and Yugul, spoken to the west of Warndarang and both apparently extinct, are also related.

Heath's Warndarang grammar contains a 100-page grammatical description, a handful of texts, and a brief wordlist. A Warndarang story of the Hodgson Downs massacre is published separately, and both Margaret Sharpe and Arthur Capell collected material in the 1960s and 1940s, respectively, much of which is unpublished but was incorporated into Heath's grammar.

Within the Gunwinyguan languages, Warndarang is most closely related to Mara, a language today spoken by only a handful of people. Warndarang and Mara, together with Alawa and Yugul, form what used to be known as the "Mara-Alawic family"[5] and today is considered a subgrouping of the Gunwinyguan family.[6] Mara was traditionally spoken to the south of Warndarang, along the coast and the Limmen Bight River, while Yugul and Alawa were spoken inland, to the west of Warndarang. Yugul and Alawa both appear to be extinct. Warndarang territory was bordered on the north by the languages Ngandi and Nunggubuyu, with which Warndarang had significant contact.[7] Ngandi is extinct, though many Nunggubuyu children are semi-speakers.[8]

The Warndarang people classified themselves into four patrilinealsemimoieties used in ritual settings: mambali, muruŋun, wuʈal, and guyal (wuyal). Mambali and muruŋun were considered to be associated, as were wuʈal and guyal, enough so that a person of one semimoiety learned and was permitted to sing the traditional songs of the associated semimoiety.[9] Each semimoiety was associated with a particular watering hole and animal totems (for example, muruŋun had the totem ŋarugalin, "dugong [Dugong dugon]"), though anybody could drink from the watering holes and a person was permitted to consume his or her totem.[10] This structure is very similar to those of the Mara and Nunggubuyu people.[11]

The majority of Warndarang material was collected by the linguist Jeffrey Heath in 1973 (two days) and 1974 (fifteen days) from a single informant, Isaac Joshua. Isaac was born in approximately 1904 in the Phelp River region, moving as a young man to work as a stockman with the Mara people. As such, he had spoken very little Warndarang in decades preceding Heath's arrival, speaking instead in Mara, English, Kriol, or Nunggubuyu, but proved to be a good informant, especially knowledgeable on flora-fauna and religiously significant terms. Brief work on Warndarang by Margaret Sharpe in the 1960s also used Isaac Joshua as the sole informant, though Arthur Capell's work in the 1940s used Isaac's brother, Joshua Joshua. An elderly woman by the name of Elizabeth Joshua remembered a small amount of Warndarang, and Heath checked a few points with her after Isaac's death.[12]

Warndarang has three commonly used vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/. A small number of words also contain an /e/, though there is some evidence that these are all loanwords. (Mara also has a very small quantity of lexical items containing an /e/, all of which are related to insect terminology.) Additionally, the vowel /o/ appears in exactly on Warndarang word: the interjection yo!, meaning "yes, good!" and found in many nearby languages as well as in the local English-based creole. Heath observed no allophones within the five vowels.

Word- or stem-final clusters in Warndarang are formed by the combination of a lateral, rhotic, or semi-vowel (l, ɭ, r, ɻ, y, or w) and a velar or lamino-alveolar stop or nasal (g, ŋ, j, or ɲ). The only word- or stem-initial clusters are nasal-stop combinations in which the nasal is usually not pronounced.

Medial (inter-word or inter-stem) double consonant clusters are common. Nasal + stop clusters, both homorganic (formed with phonemes from the same place of articulation) and non-homorganic, are frequent, as are nasal + nasal clusters. Stop + nasal clusters are rare, but they do occur. Liquids (laterals or rhotics) can be combined with stops or nasals, though (stop or nasal) + liquid are not found. Geminate clusters (in which the same consonant is repeated twice) are found only in reduplicated words such as garaggarag, "darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae)."

Medial triple clusters are rare, though are seen in laterals or rhotics followed by homorganic (same place of articulation) nasal + stop clusters, as in buɻŋgar "dirty water" (both /ŋ/ and /g/ are velar). A small number of reduplicated words display other consonant combinations, as in guralgguralg "common koel (Eudynamys orientalis)".

When two vowels come into contact across morphemes, the cluster is simplified to one vowel. Gemination, the repetition of the same vowel, results in that vowel. Any vowel followed by an /i/ will become an /i/. /u/ + /a/ will become an /u/, and /a/ + /u/ will become an /a/. Heath was not able to acquire enough data to determine a rule for /i/ + /a/ or /i/ + /u/, and only the underlying triple-vowel sequence /uai/, which becomes an /i/, was observed out of all possible three-vowel combinations.

At the beginnings of words or stems, apico-alveolar and retroflexed consonants are not distinguished. When words are reduplicated or pronounced directly after a vowel, however, Heath was able to hear slight retroflexion, and so these words are typically analyzed to begin with a retroflex, with the exceptions of /nd/ versus /ɳʈ/, in which Heath found a contrast, and the single word daga meaning "sister," which was never heard as *ʈaga.

Nearly all Warndarang words begin with consonants; the few, chiefly adverbial, exceptions are posited by Heath as underlyingly beginning with a semivowel /w/ or /y/.

Stops are typically voiced in all but syllable-final positions, where they are voiceless, and nearly all stops are lenis. The interdental stop d̪, however, which occurs primarily in loans from Nunggubuyu, is fortis and voiceless no matter its position. Nasal-stop combinations can occur only at the beginning of prefixed noun stems, though in prefix-less nouns only the stop is pronounced, with the sole exception of the archaic reduplicated verb mbir-mbir "to make a nest".

Stops occurring for the second time in words are frequently lenited: a second /b/ or /g/ will become a /w/ and a second /j/ a /y/. This pattern is usually observed in reduplicated words, as in gujirwujir "jellyfish" or jaɻi-yaɻi "to do continuously." Exceptions occur, however – for example, there is no lenition in the word buwa-buwa "to face punishment by spearing" and the noun mawaɻayimbirjimbir "hook spear" has the first j leniting, not the second.

Stop nasalization occurs when a stop is followed by a nasal across a morpheme boundary, though such nasalization is optional: both giadmayi (underlying form) and gianmayi are acceptable forms of "they (two) went." Stop germination across morpheme boundaries almost always results in simplification to a single phoneme.

Reduplication is found frequently in Warndarang. A reduplicated verb typically indicates that the action is repeated, done continuously, or performed by many people. For example, ala-biyi-wiyima means "they were all fighting" and waɻ-waɻŋawiɳʈima means "I saw him frequently." In nouns and adjectives, reduplication often but not always takes the meaning of plurality, often with humans, as in wulu-muna-munaɳa-ɲu "white people" or wu-ɭuɭga-ɭuɭga "islands."

Reduplication can be full (the entire word is repeated), monosyllabic (only one syllable of the word is repeated), or bisyllabic (two syllables of the word are repeated).

Nouns referring to humans fall into one of six classes, denoted by prefixes:

ɳa-

masculine singular

ŋi-

feminine singular

yiri-

dual (two of the noun)

yili-

paucal (three, four, or five of the noun)

wulu-

plural (more than five of the noun)

ɻa-

indefinite

``ɻa- is used for human nouns where the number or gender are either unknown, unimportant, or clear from context.

There are also six noun classes for non-human nouns, also marked by prefixes. The assignment of nouns to a noun class is apparently arbitrary, though there are a few generalizations:

Prefix

Generalized Usage

ɳa-

place names

ŋi-

animal terms

ɻa-

large animals

wu-

tree names

ma-

plants with edible underground portions

yiri-

dual (two of the noun)

Some nouns were found to vary in their noun classes, alternating prefixes without any apparent change in meaning. Note that while there is a singular-dual distinction, there is no morphological way to distinguish non-human singular nouns from non-human plural nouns.

The nominative case is used for the subjects of clauses are well as both direct and indirect objects and in some situations where the instrumental or purposive might be more expected. Unlike in many other Australian languages, the subject–object distinction is marked on the verb and not on the noun.

Additionally, there is also an absolutive suffix, which is added before the locative or the nominative marking and to most unmarked nouns. This suffix depends on the last phoneme of the stem:

Typically, possession in Warndarang is simply marked with juxtaposition, in which a pronoun possessive and the possessor in the nominative case directly follows the possessed object. In kinship terms, however, possession is marked with special affixes. First person kinship possession is marked with ŋa-, second person kinship possession is marked with ø-, and third person by a noun class prefix and the absolutive suffix. There is no distinction of number in the possessors. For example:

ŋa-baba

my/our father

ŋa-bujin

my/our wife

ø-baba

your father

ø-bujin

your wife

ɳa-baba-ɲu

his/their father

ŋi-bujin-gu

his/their wife

Unfortunately, there is little data on kinship terminology; the semantic domains of each term within the system are unclear. Furthermore, the correct marker for plural kinship nouns, such as to say "his fathers," is unknown.

Vocatives, nouns referring to the person being addressed, include kinship terms and nouns capturing the person's age, gender, or social status. Personal names were typically not used to directly address a person. Kinship vocatives typically included possessive prefixes but not articles; e.g., ŋa-baba would mean "my father" when the speaker addressed his or her father, while ɳa-nu ŋa-bana would mean "my father" when the speaker was referring to his or her father in the presence of a third party.

There are also vocative interjections, used for obtaining the attention of the addressee: ɳamaɻ "hey you" (singular), ŋudjuguɲay "hey you" (dual), and ŋuduguɲay "hey you" (plural).

Independent Warndarang pronouns are distinguished by person (first, second, and third), number (singular, dual, and plural), gender (masculine versus feminine in the third-person singular) and inclusivity (dual/plural first person including the addressee or dual/plural first person excluding the addressee). Nonhuman pronouns also mark noun class. Possessive pronouns mark for person, number, and inclusivity, but not for gender or for non-human noun class.

Pronouns are also marked as prefixes on transitive and intransitive verbs, with different prefixes for different transitive pronoun combination. For instance, a first-person singular subject and a third-person singular object would be marked by the prefix ŋa-, but a third-person singular subject and a first-person singular object would cause the marking ŋara-. Furthermore, the form of these prefixes can depend on the environment, as a few prefixes have different forms depending on whether they precede a vowel, a nasal, or a non-nasal consonant.

Demonstratives – pronouns that distinguish nouns using a particular frame of reference – in Warndarang are complex. The primary system describes where in space the object is, and is preceded by the noun-class prefix, here indicated by *.

*-niya

proximate

a-*-ni

immediate

*-wa, *-ni

near-distant

*-niɲi

distant

*-nɲaya

anaphoric

The "anaphoric" demonstrative is used when the demonstrative category is clear from context, often because it has recently been mentioned.

The suffix –wala, usually considered to be the ablative marker, can be added to a demonstrative to mean that the noun is moving toward the center of the frame of reference, an affix also found in the languages Ngandi and Nunggubuyu to the north. Likewise, the locative marker –yaŋa, when added to a demonstrative, takes the meaning of motion in any direction except that towards the center of the frame of reference. There is also an unproductive a-*-niɲi demonstrative, used with the class wu, to mean "that one over there."

Each of the demonstrative pronouns can be taken with the prefix wu- and used as adverbs to indicate overall location rather than the location of a specific object. Like the demonstrative pronouns, the adverbs can also take the ablative suffix –wala. In this case, -wala adds the meaning of "from," as in wu-niya-wala "from there, near-distant," or of time, with wu-niya-wala glossed as "after that." These meanings are apparently identical to that of the adverb wudjiwa to mean "after that" or "from there." Addition of the locative –yaŋa gives the adverb the meaning of "in that direction."

If the adverb in the locative is reduplicated, it takes the meaning of "farther in that direction." There are three other Warndarang directional adverbs not yet mentioned: arwaɻ "region up from the coast," yaɭburi "downward," and wanga-ɲi "in another direction."

The most basic verb complex in Warndarang consists of a pronominal prefix (see above), an inflected verb stem, and a set of suffixes marking tense, mood, and aspect. There might be other prefixes in front of the pronominal prefix, such as the negative gu- or the potential u-.

In some constructions, there is a "main verb," which presents the basic idea, and then an inflectable "auxiliary verb" which refines the meaning of the main verb. If that is the case, the main verb becomes one of the prefixes to the auxiliary verb.

Some Warndarang verbs can only serve as main verbs and some only as auxiliary verbs, though most can serve as either.

Reflexive/reciprocal markers are included within the inflected verb stem. The reflexive marker is –i- and indicates either "do to oneself" or a passive meaning. For example, ɭar-ŋa-g-i-ma-ø could either mean "I cut myself" or "I was cut," with the –g-i- the reflexive form of the root –ga-. A few verb stems can take the reflexive to indicate that the object is unimportant, such as in the transitive verb-auxiliary pair war+ga meaning "to sing" (about something) in the form war-ŋa-g-i-ma-ø to mean "I was singing," with no object, rather than "I was singing about myself" or "a song about me was being sung."

The reciprocal marker is –yi- or occasionally –ji- in some older forms. Both the reflexive and reciprocal markers have cognates in Nunggubuyu and Ngandi.

A verbal complex in the negative always begins with the prefix gu-. In complexes where the pronominal prefix is either third person intransitive or third-to-third transitive, the prefix –yu- is also included, after the negative and after the main verb (if there is one) but before the pronominal prefix.

After the negative gu- prefix comes the opportunity for the prefix -ɻaŋani- meaning "no one" and indicating that "no one" is the subject of the verbal complex. After this slot comes the benefactive–ma-, which indicates that the pronominal prefix of a transitive verb is referring to the indirect object rather than to the direct object (the default assumption). After this slot comes the rare prefix –man-, whose meaning Heath was unable to determine but appears to indicate the speaker's involvement in the verbal complex.

After these four possible prefixes would come the main verb, if there was one, and then the centripetal prefix -ya- to indicate that the action is directed towards the frame of reference rather than away from it. The word ŋa-gaya, for instance, means "I took it," but the addition of ya- to ya-ŋa-gaya shifts the meaning to "I brought it." After the centripetal prefix would come the third-person negation prefix (see above) and then finally the potential prefix –u- to indicate possibility, that something can, should, could have, or should have been done.

The process of verbal compounding is not as productive in Warndarang as it is in surrounding languages, though it does occur, usually when an adverb is added to the beginning of the main verb of the verbal complex. These are distinguished from simple juxtaposition (in which the adverb would not be part of the verbal complex) in that prefixes such as the negative gu- precede the adverb.

To ask a yes/no question in Warndarang, an assertion is stated with a slight intonational difference (rise on the penultimate syllable, fall on the ultimate syllable, as opposed to a level tone falling off), though jabay "maybe" can be added to the end of the statement to underscore the questioning nature. The first would be the equivalent of the English "you're going to the store?" and the second of "you're going to the store, right?"

Other sorts of questions require interrogative particles, usually preceded by the noun classifier wu-. The word meaning "what thing?" is wu-ngaŋa, for example, which can be turned to "why?" by adding the purposive -ni to create wu-ngaŋa-ni or the purposive and the word aru "because," aru wu-ngaŋa-ni. The particle "when," however, is mala-wunga, probably from wunga meaning "to do what?" though mala- as a prefix is found nowhere else in Warndarang.

Rather as in English, most Warndarang clauses are subject–verb (SV) for intransitive clauses and agent–verb–object (AVO) for transitive clauses. Other orders are possible, however, with clauses rearranged in what is known as focusing.

To focus (emphasize) a component of a Warndarang sentence, the constituent is brought to the beginning of the clause, separated from the remaining words with the particle wu-nu. For example, the statement ɲala-ɲala wu-nu ŋabaɻu-ŋa-maɻi "I nearly died" focuses ɲala-ɲala, emphasizing that the speaker nearly died. In English, this is primarily done through tone; in German, this is done by placing the constituent in the first position within the phrase.

Focusing is often used to indicate clause subordination, though replacing wu-nu with an article that agrees with the head noun more formally indicates relative clauses. For example, the focused ɳa-jawulba-ɲu wu-nu ŋabaɻa-mi "the old man who died" could also be stated as ɳa-jawulba-ɲu ɳa-nu ŋabaɻa-mi, with the ɳa-nu referring to the masculine, singular state of ɳa-jawulba-ɲu, "the old man."

Nominalization, the transformation of a verb or member of another non-nominal syntactic class into a noun, is rare in Warndarang, with just a few, unproductive examples in the text. There is one recorded instance of –maŋgara being added to a verb to mean "the time at which the action occurred": mud- maŋgara, from mud "to break," follows the well-attested word ʈuʈul "right up to, all the way to" in order to mean "up to the point of breaking." Similarly, there is one record of wu-ŋgar-maɳjar-ni, from -ɳgar- "to dance," to mean "for dancing."

Heath was unable to elicit or find any conditional constructions ("if X, then Y") during his study; the closest examples in the text use the word jabay "maybe" ("Maybe he will come, maybe I will kill him") or place both clauses within the past potential.

The word aru "because," however, was often used to construct clauses meaning "because of X, Y did Z."

Warndarang (a language extinct since 1974) and Mara (a language with only a small number of partial speakers) are each other's closest relatives. Together with Alawa (a language extinct since the early 1970s) and Yugul (a language attested by speakers of Warndarang, Mara, and Alawa but apparently extinct,[16] though the community is still thriving[17]), these languages form the Maran subgroup of the Gunwinyguan language family. The three documented languages share much vocabulary and have many similar grammatical structures, though there are significant differences, and Warndarang has been heavily influenced by loanwords from Nunggubuyu and Ngandi to the north.[18]

All three languages are prefixing, and their verbs consist of either a single inflected stem or an uninflected "main verb" preceding an inflected auxiliary verb.[19] Such verbal particles are absent in the languages to the north.[20] The Maran languages also share verbal features such as particle reduplication within the verbal complex indicating a repeated or continuous action (a pattern common in Australian languages), and the negation of verbs is indicated by a particle immediately preceding the verb complex (gu in both Warndarang and Mara but ŋayi in Alawa).[21]

Mara has a significantly more complex verbal inflection system than Warndarang (sixteen different tense/aspect/mood categories in Mara but only eight in Warndarang and apparently seven in Alawa), an unusually intricate system for Australian languages.[22] Both languages, however, have conjugation paradigms that are highly verb-specific.

In addition to the similarities in the order of the verb complex, Mara and Warndarang also both use word-order to focus, or highlight, a particular item within the clause, though otherwise the word-order in Mara is far stricter than that in Warndarang.

Alawa divides its nouns into two genders (masculine and feminine)[23] while Mara has three classes (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and Warndarang six. All three languages distinguish between singular, dual, and plural, with Warndarang having an additional "paucal" (three to five) class for human nouns. The use of noun cases in Warndarang and Mara are nearly identical – Mara condenses the allative and locative cases and adds a pergressive case – though the only cognate across the paradigm is the purposive -ni. The case marking system of Alawa is apparently not related.[24] The demonstratives in Warndarang and Mara cover approximately the same semantic categories (proximate, immediate, distant, and anaphoric, though Warndarang adds an intermediate near-distant), though the forms themselves have little similarity. In fact, the Mara demonstratives inflect for case, number, and gender, while Warndarang demonstratives engage a single basic form. Again, the Alawa demonstrative system is entirely separate, drawing only a single distance distinction ("this" versus "that") but with more nuanced anaphoric distinctions.

The directional terminology between Warndarang and Mara shares many cognates, such as gargaɭi (Mara) and argaɭi (Warndarang) for "west" or guymi (both languages) for "north," though Mara again has a far more intricate and irregular morphological system to distinguish cases in these terms. Mara also has an up/down directional distinction that is absent in Warndarang. There is no Alawa data for cardinal directions.[25]

Cultural terminology between the three languages is distinct. Mara has an extremely complex kinship terminology system, including a large number of dyadic terms;[26] Warndarang's system appeared to be much simpler, though the linguist Jeffrey Heath was unable to elicit much kinship information before his informant died.[27] Alawa has a morphologically irregular system similar to Mara's, but lacks the dyadic terms and shares few cognates (exceptions include baba for "older sibling"). A cursory analysis of the flora-fauna terms in the three languages also reveals few cognates. The semi-moieties in Warndarang and Mara have nearly identical names, however, though the groups were associated with different totems, songs, and rituals.[28]

1.
Northern Territory
–
The Northern Territory is a federal Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. It shares borders with Western Australia to the west, South Australia to the south, to the north, the territory is bordered by the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria. Despite its large area—over 1,349,129 square kilometres, the Northern Territorys population of 244,000 makes it the least populous of Australias eight major states and territories, having fewer than half as many people as Tasmania. The archaeological history of the Northern Territory begins over 40,000 years ago when Indigenous Australians settled the region, makassan traders began trading with the indigenous people of the Northern Territory for trepang from at least the 18th century onwards. The coast of the territory was first seen by Europeans in the 17th century, the British were the first Europeans to attempt to settle the coastal regions. After three failed attempts to establish a settlement, success was achieved in 1869 with the establishment of a settlement at Port Darwin. Today the economy is based on tourism, especially Kakadu National Park in the Top End and the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in central Australia, the capital and largest city is Darwin. The population is not concentrated in regions but rather along the Stuart Highway. The other major settlements are Palmerston, Alice Springs, Katherine, Nhulunbuy, residents of the Northern Territory are often known simply as Territorians and fully as Northern Territorians, or more informally as Top Enders and Centralians. With the coming of the British, there were four attempts to settle the harsh environment of the northern coast. The Northern Territory was part of colonial New South Wales from 1825 to 1863, except for a time from February to December 1846. It was part of South Australia from 1863 to 1911, under the administration of colonial South Australia, the overland telegraph was constructed between 1870 and 1872. A railway was built between Palmerston and Pine Creek between 1883 and 1889. The economic pattern of raising and mining was established so that by 1911 there were 513,000 cattle. Victoria River Downs was at one time the largest cattle station in the world, gold was found at Grove Hill in 1872 and at Pine Creek, Brocks Creek, Burrundi, and copper was found at Daly River. On 1 January 1911, a decade after federation, the Northern Territory was separated from South Australia, alfred Deakin opined at this time To me the question has been not so much commercial as national, first, second, third and last. Either we must accomplish the peopling of the territory or submit to its transfer to some other nation. In late 1912 there was growing sentiment that the name Northern Territory was unsatisfactory, the names Kingsland, Centralia and Territoria were proposed with Kingsland becoming the preferred choice in 1913

2.
Australia
–
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia

3.
Dugong
–
The dugong is a medium-sized marine mammal. It is one of four living species of the order Sirenia and it is the only living representative of the once-diverse family Dugongidae, its closest modern relative, Stellers sea cow, was hunted to extinction in the 18th century. The dugong is the strictly marine herbivorous mammal. The dugong is the only sirenian in its range, which spans the waters of some 40 countries and territories throughout the Indo-West Pacific, the northern waters of Australia between Shark Bay and Moreton Bay are believed to be the dugongs contemporary stronghold. Like all modern sirenians, the dugong has a body with no dorsal fin or hind limbs. The forelimbs or flippers are paddle-like, the dugong is easily distinguished from the manatees by its fluked, dolphin-like tail, but also possesses a unique skull and teeth. Its snout is sharply downturned, an adaptation for feeding in benthic seagrass communities, the molar teeth are simple and peg-like unlike the more elaborate molar dentition of manatees. The dugong has been hunted for thousands of years for its meat, traditional hunting still has great cultural significance in several countries in its modern range, particularly northern Australia and the Pacific Islands. The dugongs current distribution is fragmented, and many populations are believed to be close to extinction, the IUCN lists the dugong as a species vulnerable to extinction, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species limits or bans the trade of derived products. Despite being legally protected in many countries, the causes of population decline remain anthropogenic and include fishing-related fatalities, habitat degradation. With its long lifespan of 70 years or more, and slow rate of reproduction, the word dugong derives from the Tagalog term dugong which was in turn adopted from the Malay duyung, both meaning lady of the sea. Other common local names include sea cow, sea pig and sea camel, Dugong dugon is the only extant species of the family Dugongidae, and one of only four extant species of the Sirenia order, the others forming the manatee family. It was first classified by Müller in 1776 as Trichechus dugon and it was later assigned as the type species of Dugong by Lacépède and further classified within its own family by Gray and subfamily by Simpson. Dugongs and other sirenians are not closely related to marine mammals. Dugongs and elephants share a group with hyraxes and the aardvark. The fossil record shows sirenians appearing in the Eocene, where they most likely lived in the Tethys Ocean, the Stellers sea cow became extinct in the 18th century. No fossils exist of other members of the Dugongidae, molecular studies have been made on dugong populations using mitochondrial DNA. The results have suggested that the population of Southeast Asia is distinct from the others, Australia has two distinct maternal lineages, one of which also contains the dugongs from Africa and Arabia

4.
Australasian darter
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The Australasian darter or Australian darter is a species of bird in the darter family, Anhingidae. It is found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea and it weighs around 2.6 kg and spans 86–94 cm in length. John Gould described the Australasian darter as Plotus novaehollandiae in 1847, closely related to American, African, and Oriental darters, the Australasian darter has been classed as a subspecies of the African or African plus Oriental darters. All four have also been classed as a single species, examination of the leg bones indicates the three Old World species are more closely related to each other with the American species more divergent. Genetic analysis showed it differed from A. rufa to an equivalent to that between other separate species, and shifted consensus to treating the Australasian darter as a separate species. Fossils of the Australasian darter have been recovered from several Pleistocene strata in Australia, as well as Australasian darter, common names given to the species include darter, diver, needle-beak shag, shag, and snake-bird. The indigenous people of southwestern Australia called it mimal, gold also called it the New Holland darter or New Holland devil-bird. The Australasian darter is a slim bird measuring 86–94 cm long with a slender neck. The male has black plumage with a white streak down the side of its head and neck, typical habitat is freshwater or brackish wetlands more than 0.5 m deep with fallen trees or logs and vegetated banks, less commonly, darters are found in inland saltwater environments. The Australasian darter is found in the lowlands of New Guinea, New Britain, the Moluccas and it is found across Australia, though not in the Great Sandy or Great Victoria Deserts or Nullarbor Plain, nor Tasmania. The Australasian darter forages in water, often with only its head and its feathers soak up water in spaces between them, allowing the bird to reduce its natural buoyancy and swim underwater. The Australasian darter breeds throughout its range on or near bodies of fresh or inland salt water, breeding process will takes place once a year, or twice on rare occasions of two floods in the one year. The nest is a large, wide dish-shaped structure made of sticks and lined with reeds, leaves and rushes, darters often build their nests in cormorant colonies, where the nests can be distinguished by their larger size and lack of guano. Three to five elongated oval eggs are laid, measuring 56 by 34 mm and they are pale blue but covered in a layer of chalky lime, and become progressively scratched and stained over the incubation period

5.
Arnhem Land
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Arnhem Land is one of the five regions of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the corner of the territory and is around 500 km from the territory capital Darwin. The region has an area of 97,000 km2, which covers the area of Kakadu National Park. The area covers about 34,000 km2 and has an population of 16,000, of whom 12,000 are Yolngu. The region’s service hub is Nhulunbuy,600 km east of Darwin, other major population centres are Yirrkala, Gunbalanya, Ramingining, and Maningrida. A substantial proportion of the population, which is mostly Aboriginal and this outstation movement started in the early 1980s. Many Aboriginal groups moved to very small settlements on their traditional lands. These population groups have very little western influence culturally speaking, many of the regions leaders have called and continue to call for a treaty that would allow the Yolngu to operate under their own traditional laws. In 2013-14, the region contributed around $1.3 billion or 7% to the Northern Territory’s gross state product. Arnhem Land has been occupied by people for tens of thousands of years and is the location of the oldest-known stone axe. The Gove Peninsula was heavily involved in the defence of Australia during World War II, at least since the 18th century Muslim traders from Makassar visited Arnhem Land each year to trade, harvest, and process sea cucumbers or trepang. This sea slug is highly prized in Chinese cuisine, for folk medicine and this Macassan contact with Australia is the first recorded example of interaction between the inhabitants of the Australian continent and their Asian neighbours. This contact had an effect on local indigenous Australians. The Makassans exchanged goods such as cloth, tobacco, knives, rice, Makassar pidgin became a lingua franca along the north coast among several indigenous Australian groups who were brought into greater contact with each other by the seafaring Makassan culture. These traders from the southwest corner of Sulawesi also introduced the word balanda for white people, in Arnhem Land, the word is still widely used today to refer to white Australians. The Dutch started settling in Sulawesi Island in the early 17th century, archeological remains of Makassar contact, including trepang processing plants from the 18th and 19th centuries, are still found at Australian locations such as Port Essington and Groote Eylandt. The Makassans also planted tamarind trees, after processing, the sea slugs were traded by the Makassans to Southern China. In 2014, an 18th-century Chinese coin was found in the area of Wessel Islands off the coast on a beach on Elcho Island during a historical expedition

6.
Gulf of Carpentaria
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The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea. The northern boundary is defined as a line from Slade Point, Queensland in the northeast, to Cape Arnhem. At its mouth, the Gulf is 590 km wide, the north-south length exceeds 700 km. It covers a area of about 300,000 km². The general depth is between 55 and 66 metres and does not exceed 82 metres, the tidal range in the Gulf of Carpentaria is between two and three metres. The Gulf and adjacent Sahul Shelf were dry land at the peak of the last ice age 18,000 years ago when sea level was around 120 m below its present position. At that time a large, shallow lake occupied the centre of what is now the Gulf, the Gulf hosts a submerged coral reef province that was only recognised in 2004. The first known European explorer to visit the region was the Dutch Willem Janszoon in his 1605–6 voyage and his fellow countryman, Jan Carstenszoon, visited in 1623 and named the gulf in honour of Pieter de Carpentier, at that time the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Abel Tasman also explored the coast in 1644, the region was later explored and charted by Matthew Flinders in 1802 and 1803. The land bordering the Gulf is generally flat and low-lying, to the west is Arnhem Land, the Top End of the Northern Territory, and Groote Eylandt, the largest island in the Gulf. To the east is the Cape York Peninsula and Torres Strait which joins the Gulf to the Coral Sea, the area to the south is known as the Gulf Country. The climate is hot and humid with two seasons per year, the dry season lasts from about April until November and is characterized by very dry southeast to east winds, generated by migratory winter high pressure systems to the south. The wet season lasts from December to March, most of the years rainfall is compressed into these months, and during this period, many low-lying areas are flooded. The Gulf is prone to tropical cyclones during the period between November and April, the gulf experiences an average of three cyclones each year that are thought to transport sediments in a clockwise direction along the Gulfs coast. In many other parts of Australia, there are dramatic climatic transitions over fairly short distances, in September and October the Morning Glory cloud appears in the Southern Gulf. The best vantage point to see this phenomenon is in the Burketown area shortly after dawn and it has been hypothesized that the Gulf experienced a major asteroid impact event in 536 A. D. The Gulf of Carpentaria is known to contain fringing reefs and isolated coral colonies, however, this has not always been the case. Their existence points to an earlier, late Quaternary phase of reef growth under cooler-climate

7.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark

8.
Glottal stop
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The glottal stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩, using IPA, this sound is known as a glottal plosive. In English, the glottal stop occurs as an open juncture, for most US English speakers, a glottal stop is used as an allophone of /t/ between a vowel and m or a syllabic n except in slow speech. In British English, the stop is most familiar in the Cockney pronunciation of butter as buer. The non-phonemic glottal stop always occurs before isolated or initial vowels, features of the glottal stop, Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Since the consonant is also oral, with no outlet, the airflow is blocked entirely. Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibration of the cords, necessarily so, because the vocal cords are held tightly together. It is a consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only. Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds. Although this segment is not a phoneme in English, it is present phonetically in nearly all dialects of English as an allophone of /t/ in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic /t/ between vowels as in city. In Received Pronunciation, a stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop, e. g. sto’p, tha’t, kno’ck, wa’tch, also lea’p, soa’k, hel’p. In many languages that do not allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian, there are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish, Chinese and Thai. In many languages, the intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant. These are only known to be contrastive in one language, Gimi, in the traditional Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with an apostrophe, ⟨’⟩, and this is the source of the IPA character ⟨ʔ⟩. In Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter ⟨k⟩, in Võro, other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter aleph ⟨א⟩, and the Cyrillic letter palochka ⟨Ӏ⟩ used in several Caucasian languages. In Tundra Nenets it is represented by the letters apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩, in Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger, and are represented by the character ⟨っ⟩. In the graphic representation of most Philippine languages, the stop has no consistent symbolization

9.
Roper River
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The Roper River is a large perennial river located in the Katherine region of the Northern Territory, Australia. The river is joined by fifteen tributaries including the Chambers, Strangways, Jalboi, Hodgson and the Wilton Rivers. The river descends 126 metres over its 1, 010-kilometre course and has a catchment area of 81,794 square kilometres, which is one of the largest river catchment areas in the Northern Territory. The Roper River is navigable for about 145 kilometres, until the limit at Roper Bar. Mataranka Hot Springs and the township of Mataranka lie close to the river at its western end, Port Roper lies near its mouth on Limmen Bight. The river has a mean annual outflow of 5,000 gigalitres, the first European to explore the Roper River was Ludwig Leichhardt in 1845 as he made his way from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. Leichhardt crossed the river at Roper Bar, a shelf which conveniently lies at the high tide limit on the river. He named the river after John Roper, a member of the expedition, list of rivers of Northern Territory

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is an independent Australian …

A Sea of Hands outside the AIATSIS building on Acton Peninsula. The Sea of Hands was created in 2014 with the help of local communities, to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the National Apology to Australia's First Peoples, 2008.

The Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies (GERAIS)

Chrissy Grant, Chair of the AIATSIS Research Ethics Committee, running a GERAIS workshop at AIATSIS, 2015

Part of the UNESCO listed Australian Indigenous Language collection held at AIATSIS

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin …

Image: Cardinal vowels Jones x ray

The authors of textbooks or similar publications often create revised versions of the IPA chart to express their own preferences or needs. The image displays one such version. Only the black symbols are part of the IPA; common additional symbols are in grey.